Die Prüfung

Hold on Tight

July 2011 •English

A short documentary exploring the ways LGBT couples show affection, and how small interactions like holding hands in public can carry, not only huge personal significance, but also the power to create social change.

Desconexión

December 2024 •Spanish

The Rink

May 1963 •English

This short, silent film captures a Sunday afternoon at a community skating rink. Iconic Quebec director Gilles Carle has the camera follow toddlers learning to skate, young girls flashing their skates and boys decked out in the colours of their favourite hockey teams. A picture perfect moment on a bright winter's day.

Romantici a Venezia

January 1948 •Italian

This is a documentary film on the romantic and decadent atmosphere of Venice at the end of the 18th century. A vigorous comment by Jean Cocteau tells us of the sick souls and the sorrows of literary characters and musicians who lived the dream of this city. It is the Venice of Lord Byron, Alfred de Musset, George Sand, d'Annunzio; a Venice made of precious images, palaces reflected in the water, mysterious moonlights, little squares where unhappy lovers wander under the music of Richard Wagner.

The Sound of Seeing

January 1963 •English

Made on a wind-up Bolex camera, The Sound of Seeing announced the arrival of 21-year-old filmmaker Tony Williams. Based around a painter and a composer wandering the city (and beyond), the film meshes music and imagery to show the duo taking inspiration from their surroundings.

Grand Prix: Challenge of the Champions

December 1966 •English

A short making of feature about the 1966 John Frankenheimer movie Grande Prix

Dear Chantal

May 2021 •Spanish

Pereda returns with a small, mysterious and moving tribute to Chantal Akerman, conceived as a series of joyful impossible letters addressed to the great disappeared from the cinema, to answer her fictional question about renting her bright apartment in Coyoacán.

I Think It's Clogged

July 2021 •English

This short film explores the resolution of a plumbing problem through a narrative lens compiled from found footage sourced from pornographic websites.

Tossing a Nigger in a Blanket

April 1898 •English

A method soldier boys have for amusing themselves in their leisure moments. New comrades are frequently initiated by the old-fashioned sport of tossing in a blanket. The newly arrived recruit, who is the victim of their sport, enjoys himself, perhaps, less than the other participants.

Nascita di un culto

August 1968 •Italian

In the province of Salerno in Campania, a village is attracting more and more pilgrims, sometimes several hundred a day. Arriving by bus, car and even on foot, they pray to Saint Antony to protect them from demons and disasters. They do this through the intermediary of a certain Giuseppina who embodies the dead soul of young Alberto, the grandson of the former seminarian who died accidentally some ten years earlier.

Afrique 50

December 1950 •French

Afrique 50 is a 1950 French documentary film directed by René Vautier. The first French anti-colonialist film, the film derived from an assignment in which the director was to cover educational activities by the French League of Schooling in West Africa. Vautier later filmed what he saw, a "lack of teachers and doctors, the crimes committed by the French Army in the name of France, the instrumentalization of the colonized peoples". For his role in the film Vautier was imprisoned over several months. The film was not permitted to be shown for more than 40 years.

Stop for Bud

December 1963 •Danish

Stop for Bud is Jørgen Leth's first film and the first in his long collaboration with Ole John. […] they wanted to "blow up cinematic conventions and invent cinematic language from scratch". The jazz pianist Bud Powell moves around Copenhagen -- through King's Garden, along the quay at Kalkbrænderihavnen, across a waste dump. […] Bud is alone, accompanied only by his music. […] Image and sound are two different things -- that's Leth's and John's principle. Dexter Gordon, the narrator, tells stories about Powell's famous left hand. In an obituary for Powell, dated 3 August 1966, Leth wrote: "He quite willingly, or better still, unresistingly, mechanically, let himself be directed. The film attempts to depict his strange duality about his surroundings. His touch on the keys was like he was burning his fingers -- that's what it looked like, and that's how it sounded. But outside his playing, and often right in the middle of it, too, he was simply gone, not there."

Body by Garret

May 1982 •English

This short documentary tells the story of Garret Walsh, a twelve-year-old Canadian body-builder.

China Strikes Back

January 1937 •English

In 1936 and 1937 Harry Dunham shot "several hundred feet of film," being the first cameraman to penetrate into the Shensi region and obtain footage of the Communist forces in China. He smuggled his film out and placed it in the hands of Frontier Films. Leyda, Lerner, Meyers and Maddow (they had to use pseudonyms) spent four months preparing the film for publication. In that time, the Chinese situation altered to such an extent that Frontier had to change the scenario several times in order to keep up with events...the producers had to make a happy change in the theme of China Strikes Back. It was no longer a film showing the Chinese people moving toward unity. It became a pictorial history revealing the how and why behind a realized unity.

Town of Tartu and Its Surroundings

January 1912 •Estonian

A short tour of the sites to see in and around Tartu.

The Great Blizzard in the Baltics in December

January 1913 •Estonian

A series of short winter scenes.

Ein Ehrenmann geht…

February 1971 •German

The film follows the career of Karl-Theodor Molinari from major in the Wehrmacht to general in the Bundeswehr. Authentic archive material and eyewitness testimonies are used to gather evidence of Molinari's guilt in the deaths of over a hundred French resistance fighters.

No Voice

May 2021 •English

She now lives many miles away from her mother, who is waiting to hear from her. It is a bittersweet, restless, nostalgic moment, and she remembers those vanished years.

Bombay X-Ray

October 2019 •English

A 10-year-old boy and his father support themselves by pulling a cart through Bombay's chaotic traffic. One day when they visit the doctor, they are told that they should change jobs. A visual and sound intensive documentary about a nightmarish traffic situation beyond all control.

Repainting Cuba

October 2009 •Swedish

Repainting Cuba takes a critical look at communist Cuba, where both the facades and the aging regime were given a coating of colorful paint in connection with the 50 year anniversary of the revolution. Two young Cubans under house arrest talk about being imprisoned for dealing with foreign tourists in a society where gossip and backstabbing is endemic, and where the heavy varnish can’t conceal the cracks.